1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a teat cup claw having a housing with a side portion, a bottom portion and a roof portion, which form a chamber for receiving milk. At least one inlet is arranged in the roof portion of the housing for supplying milk to the chamber from the animal to be milked, and an outlet for milk from the chamber is arranged in the roof portion of the housing for connection to a source of vacuum. A tube is arranged in the chamber with one of its ends connected to said milk outlet and with its other end situated close to but spaced from the bottom of the chamber for conducting milk from the lower part of the chamber up to the milk outlet, the opening of the tube at said other end facing the bottom of the chamber.
2. Description of the Prior Art
A teat cup claw of this kind has the advantage that its milk outlet is protectively placed on the roof portion of the claw, in contrast to the kind of teat cup claw presently most used, which lacks said tube in the chamber and which therefore need to have its milk outlet arranged on a low level in the teat cup claw. This low unprotected placing of the milk outlet leads to a great risk of damaging the milk outlet. For instance, this may easily be damaged if the teat cup claw is dropped on a floor, which often can consist of hard concrete.
Another advantage of the teat cup claw of the kind here present is that the pulsation hoses of the milking machine, which normally are connected to the teat cups via a distribution device on the roof portion of the housing, can be placed close to the milk hose from the milk outlet, at the connection places of the hoses on the teat cup claw. Thus, the portions of the milk hose and the pulsation hoses, which are situated close to the teat cup claw, can be utilized as a handle when handling the teat cup claw with the teat cups connected to the latter. Besides, it is thereby substantially avoided that the teat cup claw because of tensions created by the milk hose, is tilted during operation, so that the milk level in the teat cup claw also is tilted relative to the claw, which often can happen in teat cup claws, which have low placed milk outlets. Such a tilting of the milk level can result in the risk of an infected teat infecting other teats during milking owing to infected milk collected in the teat cup claw being sucked backwards from the latter through a milk inlet to a healthy teat (so called cross-flow).
However, the teat cup claw of the kind here present has the serious drawback that milk passing through the latter often deteriorates considerably in quality regarding the taste of the milk. This deterioration in taste is due to the fact that some of the protein shells enclosing the balls of fat in the milk, will burst because of rough transportation of the milk through the teat cup claw, whereby bad tasting free fatty acids are created from the exposed milk fat.
EP 222 574 discloses a teat cup claw with a highly placed milk outlet, by means of which the above described problem with deterioration of the milk quality is solved by connecting the upper part of the chamber directly to a further vacuum source, which is responsible for the extraction of the milk from the teats and the transportation of milk to the teat cup claw. The vacuum source, which is connected to the milk outlet, thus is only responsible for the transportation of milk from the teat cup claw. Thus, air is substantially separated from milk in the chamber, so that the mixture of milk and air, which is sucked from the chamber up into the tube, contains a relatively small amount of air. This substantially removes unfavourable influences on the milk by the air during the turbulent streaming of the mixture of milk and air, when the latter flows from the chamber into the tube, so that at least most of the protecting protein shells surrounding the balls of fat will remain intact. However, a milking machine utilizing this known teat cup claw will be relatively complicated and expensive, for one thing because solely for transporting the milk it would be necessary to connect two separate vacuum sources to the teat cup claw.